There is a daunting amount of research studies showing
that the widely acclaimed benefits on fluoride dental health are more imagined
than real. My main concern however, is the effect of sustained fluoride
intake on general health. Again, there is a huge body of research literature
on this subject, freely available and in the public domain.

But this body of work was not considered by the York
Review when their remit was changed from "Studies of the effects of
fluoride on health" to "Studies on the effects of fluoridated
water on health." It is clearly evident that it was not considered
by the BMA (Britsh Medical Association), British Dental Association (BDA),
BFS (British Fluoridation Society) and FPHM, (Faculty for Public Health
and Medicine) since they all insist, as in the briefing paper to Members
of Parliament - that fluoridation is safe and non-injurious to health.

This is a public disgrace, I will now show by reviewing
the damaging effects of fluoridation, with special reference to thyroid
illness.

It has been known since the latter part of the 19th century
that certain communities, notably in Argentina, India and Turkey were chronically
ill, with premature ageing, arthritis, mental retardation, and infertility;
and high levels of natural fluorides in the water were responsible. Not
only was it clear that the fluoride was having a general effect on the
health of the community, but in the early 1920s Goldemberg, working in
Argentina showed that fluoride was displacing iodine; thus compounding
the damage and rendering the community also hypothyroid from iodine deficiency.

Highly damaging to the thyroid gland

This was the basis of the research in the 1930s of May,
Litzka, Gorlitzer von Mundy, who used fluoride preparations to treat over-active
thyroid illness. Their patients either drank fluoridated water, swallowed
fluoride pills or were bathed in fluoridated bath water; and their thyroid
function was as a result, greatly depressed. The use in 1937 of fluorotyrosine
for this purpose showed how effective this treatment was; but the effectiveness
was difficult to predict and many patients suffered total thyroid loss.
So it was given a new role and received a new name, Pardinon. It was marketed
not for over-active thyroid disease but as a pesticide. (Note the manufacturer
of fluorotyrosine was IG Farben who also made sarin, a gas used in World
War II).

This bit of history illustrates the fact that fluorides
are dangerous in general and in particular highly damaging to the thyroid
gland, a matter to which I shall return shortly. While it is unlikely that
it will be disputed that fluorides are toxic - let us be reminded that
they are Schedule 2 Poisons under the Poisons Act 1972, the matter in dispute
is the level of toxicity attributable to given amounts; in today's context
the degree of damage caused by given concentrations in the water supply.
While admitting its toxicity, proponents rely on the fact that it is diluted
and therefore, it is claimed, unlikely to have deleterious effects.

They could not be more mistaken

It seems to me that we must be aware of how fluoride
does its damage. It is an enzyme poison. Enzymes are complex protein compounds
that vastly speed up biological chemical reactions while themselves remaining
unchanged. As we speak, there occurs in all of us a vast multitude of these
reactions to maintain life and produce the energy to sustain it. The chains
of amino acids that make up these complex proteins are linked by simple
compounds called amides; and it is with these that fluorine molecules react,
splitting and distorting them, thus damaging the enzymes and their activity.
Let it be said at once, this effect can occur at extraordinary low concentrations;
even lower than the one part per million which is the dilution proposed
for fluoridation in our water supply.

The body can only eliminate half

Moreover, fluorides are cumulative and build up steadily
with ingestion of fluoride from all sources, which include not just water
but the air we breathe and the food we eat. The use of fluoride toothpaste
in dental hygiene and the coating of teeth are further sources of substantial
levels of fluoride intake. The body can only eliminate half of the total
intake, which means that the older you are the more fluoride will have
accumulated in your body. Inevitably this means the ageing population is
particularly targeted. And even worse for the very young there is a major
element of risk in baby formula made with fluoridated water. The extreme
sensitivity of the very young to fluoride toxicity makes this unacceptable.
Since there are so many sources of fluoride in our everyday living, it
will prove impossible to maintain an average level of 1ppm as is suggested.

What is the result of these toxic effects?

First the immune system. The distortion of protein structure
causes the immune proteins to fail to recognise body proteins, and so instigate
an attack on them, which is Autoimmune Disease. Autoimmune diseases constitute
a body of disease processes troubling many thousands of people: Rheumatoid
Arthritis, Systemic Lupus Erythematosis, Asthma and Systemic Sclerosis
are examples; but in my particular context today, thyroid antibodies will
be produced which will cause Thyroiditis resulting in the common hypothyroid
disease, Hashimoto's Disease and the hyperthyroidism of Graves' Disease.

Musculo Skeletal damage results further from the enzyme
toxic effect; the collagen tissue of which muscles, tendons, ligaments
and bones are made, is damaged. Rheumatoid illness, osteoporosis and deformation
of bones inevitably follow. This toxic effect extends to the ameloblasts
making tooth enamel, which is consequently weakened and then made brittle;
and its visible appearance is, of course, dental fluorosis.

The enzyme poison effect extends to our genes; DNA cannot
repair itself, and chromosomes are damaged. Work at the University of Missouri
showed genital damage, targeting ovaries and testes. Also affected is inter
uterine growth and development of the foetus, especially the nervous system.
Increased incidence of Down's Syndrome has been documented.

Fluorides are mutagenic. That is, they can cause the
uncontrolled proliferation of cells we call cancer. This applies to cancer
anywhere in the body; but bones are particularly picked out. The incidence
of osteosarcoma in a study reporting in 1991 showed an unbelievable 50%
increase. A report in 1955 in the New England Journal of Medicine showed
a 400% increase in cancer of the thyroid in San Francisco during the period
their water was fluoridated.

My particular concern is the effect of fluorides on the
thyroid gland

Perhaps I may remind you about thyroid disease. The thyroid
gland produces hormones which control our metabolism - the rate at which
we burn our fuel. Deficiency is relatively common, much more than is generally
accepted by many medical authorities: a figure of 1:4 or 1:3 by mid life
is more likely. The illness is insidious in its onset and progression.
People become tired, cold, overweight, depressed, constipated; they suffer
arthritis, hair loss, infertility, atherosclerosis and chronic illness.
Sadly, it is poorly diagnosed and poorly managed by very many doctors in
this country.

What concerns me so deeply is that in concentrations
as low as 1ppm, fluorides damage the thyroid system on 4 levels.

1. The enzyme manufacture of thyroid hormones within
the thyroid gland itself. The process by which iodine is attached to the
amino acid tyrosine and converted to the two significant thyroid hormones,
thyroxine (T4) and liothyronine (T3), is slowed.

2. The stimulation of certain G proteins from the toxic
effect of fluoride (whose function is to govern uptake of substances into
each of the cells of the body), has the effect of switching off the uptake
into the cell of the active thyroid hormone.

3. The thyroid control mechanism is compromised. The
thyroid stimulating hormone output from the pituitary gland is inhibited
by fluoride, thus reducing thyroid output of thyroid hormones.

4. Fluoride competes for the receptor sites on the thyroid
gland which respond to the thyroid stimulating hormone; so that less of
this hormone reaches the thyroid gland and so less thyroid hormone is manufactured.

These damaging effects, all of which occur with small
concentrations of fluoride, have obvious and easily identifiable effects
on thyroid status. The running down of thyroid hormone means a slow slide
into hypothyroidism. Already the incidence of hypothyroidism is increasing
as a result of other environmental toxins and pollutions together with
wide spread nutritional deficiencies.

141 million Europeans are at risk

One further factor should give us deep anxiety. Professor
Hume of Dundee, in his paper given earlier this year to the Novartis Foundation,
pointed out that iodine deficiency is growing worldwide. There are 141
million Europeans are at risk; only 5 European countries are iodine sufficient.
UK now falls into the marginal and focal category. Professor Hume recently
produced figures to show that 40% of pregnant women in the Tayside region
of Scotland were deficient by at least half of the iodine required for
a normal pregnancy. A relatively high level of missing, decayed, filled
teeth was noted in this non-fluoridated area, suggesting that the iodine
deficiency was causing early hypothyroidism which interferes with the health
of teeth. Dare one speculate on the result of now fluoridating the water?

Displaces iodine in the body

These figures would be worrying enough, since they mean
that iodine deficiency, which results in hypothyroidism (thyroid hormone
cannot be manufactured without iodine) is likely to affect huge numbers
of people. What makes it infinitely worse, is that fluorine, being a halogen
(chemically related to iodine), but very much more active, displaces iodine.
So that the uptake of iodine is compromised by the ejection, as it were,
of the iodine by fluorine. To condemn the entire population, already having
marginal levels of iodine, to inevitable progressive failure of their thyroid
system by fluoridating the water, borders on criminal lunacy.

I would like to place a scenario in front of those colleagues
who favour fluoridation. A new pill is marketed. Some trials not all together
satisfactory, nevertheless, show a striking improvement in dental caries.
Unfortunately, it has been found to be thyrotoxic, mutagenic, immunosuppressive,
cause arthritis and infertility in comparatively small doses over a relatively
short period of time.

Do you think it should be marketed?

Fluoridation of the nation's water supply will do little
for our dental health; but will have catastrophic effects on our general
health. We cannot, must not, dare not, subject our nation to this appalling
risk.

Dr Barry Durrant-Peatfield

obtained his Medical degrees in 1960 at Guy's Hospital
London. He left the NHS in 1980 to specialise in thyroid illnesses drawing
inspiration from the work of infamous Dr Broda Barnes, at the Foundation
that bears his name, Connecticut, USA. He has been a medical practitioner
for over forty years specialising in metabolic disorders during which time
he became a leading authority in the UK for thyroid and adrenal management.
For over twenty years he also ran a successful private clinic and became
a nation-wide leading authority on thyroid and adrenal dysfunction, but
clashed with establishment medicine in the management of thyroid illness.
He is the author of The Great Thyroid Scandal (see opposite page), he currently
lectures at nutritional colleges in London as well as conducting his own
teaching seminars. Barry will shortly be opening a diagnostic clinic in
the UK for thyroid and adrenal disorders where he will provide advice on
diagnosis and treatment with special interests in nutritional aspects.
For further information contact: Dr B Durrant- Peatfield 36A High St, Mersham,
Redhill Surrey, RH1 3EA.

Sarin: (GB: isopropyl methylphosono-fluoridate) is a
colorless, odorless volatile liquid, soluble in water, first synthesized
at IG Farben in 1938. It kills mainly through inhalation.

Cyclosarin (GF) and Thiosarin are variants. Pennsylvania
Department of Health

http://www.dsf.health.state.pa.us/health/cwp/view.asp?a=171&q=233740

Sarin: (GB: CH3-P(=O)(-F)(-OCH(CH3)2)

Source: A FOA Briefing Book on Chemical Weapons http://www.opcw.org/resp/html/nerve.html
Gerhard Schrader, a chemist at IG Farben, was given the task of developing
a pesticide. Two years later a phosphorus compound with extremely high
toxicity was produced for the first time.

IG Farben: "...the board of American IG Farben had
three directors from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the most influential
of the various Federal Reserve Banks. American IG Farben. also had interlocks
with Standard Oil of New Jersey, Ford Motor Company, Bank of Manhattan
(later to become the Chase Manhattan Bank), and AEG. (German General Electric)
Source: Moody's Manual of Investments; 1930, page 2149."

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_02.htm

At a later date, Namaste will be publishing a more in-depth
article outlining the devastating affects that fluoride, aspartame and
MSG have on the endocrine system.

Dr Durrant-Peatfield wiill be answering frequently asked
questions on thyroid illness in Namaste's next issue. Send your questions
to us preferably by